Sanniesguns Sahara, a Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah with Courthouse elements

(By Kate McLachlan and Moira Walker)

Below is a photo of the rising five-year-old mare, Sanniesguns Sahara, a daughter of the asil Rosina-line stallion Jauhar El-Zar and the Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah Sidi Maschata.

Her sire’s dam, Whitehouse Yashma, is by the stallion Anchor Hill Omar, bringing in Babson-Sirecho-Gainey breeding. Yashma’s dam, Sahiby Yakouta, is a daughter of the Courthouse mare Rosina, who has one line each to the stallions Atesh and Nimr.

The Courthouse Stallions have been featured before, with barely surviving asil lines posted about 1/ here, 2/ here, 3/ here, 4/ and here. For functional purposes, the lines of descent have broken into two branches: the Austria branch, consisting of Nimr and Fedaan; and the South Africa branch, consisting of Nimr and Atesh.

The preservation of the considerably more endangered Austrian branch has been spearheaded by Laszlo Kiraly, who rescued the 1994 mare Saraly El Shahin and 2015 daughter, Salome Hamdaniya, who both carry the unique tail female line going straight back to the Blunt mare Sobha. Hopefully this continues to thrive, as it is currently the only known line to carry forward Fedaan.

The South African line, on the other hand, is a little more robust, although it would still be considered Code Red by the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force if it were in the United States. It has survived predominantly through endurance lines mixed in with a dash of halter breeding — with approximately 86 horses having been bred since 1990. Among these breeders are the Saaba Stud, Rediker Arabiere, Sanniesguns Endurance Horses (where the above featured mare came from), Brarab Arabian Stud, Edl Agbahr Arabians, Bahri Arabians, and Sidi Arabians. All of these horses trace back to the 1950 A. J. Botha import ROSINA, bred by Musgrave Clark himself and who contained both Nimr through her sireline and Atesh through her damsire’s sireline.

Rosina had about a dozen foals in her lifetime, but only two of which potentially fit the bill for preservation of the asil line, and virtually all of which followed has come in through the 1966 BM SAHIBY YAKOUTA (x Gordonville Ziyadan – Zahir x Barakah) [Sahiby Yakouta was born bay, but became flea-bitten grey; communication from Chris Vancoillie]. Two of Sahiby Yakouta’s daughters were bred by the Whitehouse Stud, owned and operated by Dr Stef and Erica Cilliers; the third, Charmante Yasmina, was bred by Ian Thompson, and bought by the Cilliers along with her dam [communication from Chris Vancoillie]. It was the Whitehouse Stud that utilized the Babson-Sirecho-Gainey Straight Egyptian stallion Anchor Hill Omar, who was bred by Dr. and Mrs. Tom Atkinsons of Anchor Hill Ranch and imported by Michelle Esslinger of Shareef Stud. The three daughters of Rosina [correction: Sahiby Yakouta] have gone on to establish their own branches with minimal overlap. Many, but not all, of these horses are tail female to the Blunt Crabbet mare Rosemary through Rosina herself. There are two other tail female lines that exist in the South African Courthouse breeding group, and those are that of 1/ the Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah line through to Barakah, and 2/ the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah line through to Nabilah. Both Barakah and Nabilah were bred by the RAS and imported from Egypt to South Africa by Claude Orpen.

There is a fourth branch of the South African Courthouse stallions that exists solely through the Bahri lines, and this one does not come through Sahiby Yakouta but rather her full brother, the 1970 GS CHARMANTE IBN ZIYADAN (x Gordonville Ziyadan). This line is a little more nebulous in veracity, with a handful of ancestors that are question marks which have yet to be satisfactorily answered, one way or another. These ancestors are all Old English Arabians — The Hon. Ethelred Dillon’s Ishtar & El Emir; the much-lauded polo stallion and sire who came to the UK from India, Zoowar, and the Ahmednagar Government Stud mare, Nightingale. These are also all tail female to Nightingale.